Work Text:
Sidney’s not entirely sure how he got the job, except that he had a pretty good answer for “Name three ways the Knicks can improve this season” and he was willing to watch all of the out-of-market baseball games.
“Baseball sucks,” Patrick says ruefully, scribbling another little note on his clipboard. Patrick is the associate producer of ‘Sports Night’ and he hasn’t stopped jittering the entire time. This interview is going nothing like Sid imagined.
“Baseball is great,” Sid defends, back straightening. Hockey may have been his sport of choice up through university, but baseball came easy, too, and he’ll always have a fondness for it.
He’s wondering if he should put up more of a fight for baseball’s honor when the man Patrick had introduced as “Tazer” pops his head into the office.
“So we’re not gonna do the four o’clock rundown? he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Sidney’s going to do it,” Patrick smiles. Tazer rolls his eyes and and disappears again.
“I don’t know what a rundown is,” Sid points out, figuring that this probably means he’s in, but Patrick’s already standing and gathering up the four manilla folders he brought.
“Then you’ll fit right in,” he smiles.
*
In the end, Tazer gets the four o’clock rundown, but only because Danny Briere does it.
“It can be confusing,” he sympathizes as he and Sid walk to the control room, “with all the numbers and words.”
“I’m actually pretty good with both numbers and words,” Sid says. He’s a stats guy. He’s a world-class stats guy. He’s a world-class stats guy who might be in a little bit over his head.
“Danny!” Patrick exclaims when they enter, spinning around in his chair. He’s in the back of four rows of seating, each higher than the last. Tazer is next to him, and then there’s an empty spot for Sidney on the end. He knows this because placed on the console is a crude crayon drawing of him high-fiving a crayon Patrick while crayon Tazer cries. “How are things in Glocca Morra?”
“Ready for the rehearsal,” Danny responds, giving a copy to Patrick, Tazer, and a few of the tech guys in front. “Where are Carts and Richie?” he asks when he still has two stacks of paper but the monitors show that the anchor desk is empty.
“Geling their hair or jerking off or something,” Pat dismisses. Tazer huffs.
“They’re in Richie’s office,” he says. “I gave them ten to get out here or we start without them and they’re calling my bluff.” He picks up his headset.
“Mike’s convinced he’s in the zone,” Patrick explains to Sid, leaning around Tazer.
“What does that even mean?” Sid asks.
“The zone-zone, man.” Patrick shakes his head. “I tried to take a couple of bucks off him today, you know, for the sake of the studio, pull the reigns on that ego. But he’s untouchable.”
“You just don’t have any patience for cards,” Tazer replies. He leans up to shout to a man two rows down. “Sharpy, lead with the Packers, put the Chargers and the Seahawks in the tease, get B-roll on the Pats.”
“I’m pretty good at cards,” Sid mentions, quiet and offhand, but it catches Patrick’s attention and he rocks forward.
“Played-bridge-with-grandma good, or asked-to-leave-the-Bellagio good?” he asks, eyes focused. Tazer raises a large hand and plants it squarely in Patrick’s face, pushing him back. Patrick just leans around the other side to stare at Sid.
“It’s all math,” Sid says, “and you just gotta watch everything.” He shrugs.
“You and me,” Pat gestures, “after the fifties.”
*
They go to one of the glass-walled conference rooms in the bullpen. Carter and Richards are easy to spot amongst the handful of other people with their Italian wool sport jackets and that scrubbed-fresh look that everyone in front of camera has.
They’re also ridiculously in synch.
Carter puts his water glass down and Richards picks his up. One reshuffles a card in his hand, the other does the same. They shoot sideways looks at each other that always manage to connect.
They share another searing look and Carter folds just before Richards calls, winning easily and scooping the entire pot towards himself.
“This is Sidney,” Patrick introduces, plopping Sid into an empty chair with surprisingly hard hands on his shoulders. “I hired him to watch baseball and take your money.”
“Hi, Sidney,” everyone choruses, but it’s not as mocking as Sid’s heard it before. He gives a little wave and Richards grins.
“I’m Richie, he’s Carts--” Carter pauses in his shuffle to give Sid an almost-douchey nod “--That’s Danny, Flower, Gags, Cogs, and the lesser Schenn.” A squawk of protest. “You’ve already made friends with Pat, and I’d like to make friends with your cash. Pennies are ones, dollars are hundreds.”
“I’m covering him,” Patrick declares, slapping a wad of bills onto the table in front of Sid. Richie raises an eyebrow.
“Bringing in a ringer?”
“They’re only ringers if I don’t intend to keep them,” Patrick says. “Now deal or I’m gonna think you’re scared.”
Richie motions to Carter, who begins tossing out cards.
It’s a massacre.
“I thought I could only hope for this reckoning to come,” Flower says seriously.
Even Carts has bowed out, despite a few rounds of furious eyebrow waggling between him and Richie.
“You’re really good at this,” Richie says, running a hand through his hair. “Why are you so good at this?”
“I watch,” Sidney shrugs.
“Watch what?” Richie asks, splitting his glare between his cards and Sidney.
“You,” Sid answers, trying to keep any malice or vague threat out of it. Richie’s eyes still widen and he leans back.
“Sure, yeah,” he says with a forced laugh. “That’s a thing normal people say.”
But Sid isn’t concerned with being normal, he’s concerned with winning. He puts no stock into losing on purpose, either to impress his high-school girlfriend or the lead anchor on his new show. Pat hired him, and whether it’s to watch baseball or play cards, Pat’s going to get what he paid for.
“I have a straight,” he says, and all eyes in the room snap to him. “You want me to think you have a flush, but Cogs folded the six you need and I have the other one. You’ve got trip sevens, a two pair at best. You should fold.”
Almost all of Richie’s winnings are in the pot, and he’s going to need the very last of it to call. Pat is looking at Sidney like he’s afraid his powers might be used for evil, mouth open and eyebrows jacked way up.
“Come on man, you owe him like 700,000 dollars,” Pat cajoles, smiling at Richie. “He’s basically your landlord at this point. Stop playing.”
But Richie won’t hear it, frowning on one side of his mouth and leaning into Carter, who’s looking grimly over Richie’s shoulder at his cards.
Richie tosses in his bet and calls. He has three sevens.
Sid turns over his cards to reveal a straight.
Someone wolf-whistles and Patrick claps him on the back, but Sid’s not feeling particularly victorious; a win and an easy win are not the same.
Pat is making a big show of shoveling the pot towards himself, taking handfuls of the pile, and Richie’s smiling good-naturedly. He really doesn’t seem bothered by it aside from the initial shock, but Carter is staring at Sid, not openly but not discreetly, either. It’s a lot of focus to be under, Sid finds, and he shifts a little.
“Are you going to do any work today?” Tazer asks from the doorway, observing the scene.
“Team-building!” Patrick shouts, and nudges the door shut with his foot.
*
“The new guy cleaned you out, Richie,” Jeff says when they get back to their office. Back when “Sports Night” began Carts had his own office, and sometimes he even went there; Mike’s pretty sure even Jonny couldn’t find it now.
“New guy is a stats phenom,” Mike dismisses, “And shouldn’t be trusted.”
Carts rolls his eyes as he hangs up their suit jackets.
“Relax, Jonny won’t like him better than you,” Jeff sighs, flinging himself down on the sofa in front of the windows. Manhattan is spread out behind him.
Mike huffs and jams on the spacebar of his laptop to wake it up.
“I don’t care what Tazer thinks of him, as long as when he thinks of his Rangers season tickets, he thinks of me first.”
Jeff rolls his eyes and picks up the script from where he had previously dumped it on the floor, holding it with one hand and struggling unsuccessfully against the half-Windsor of his tie with the other.
“Do you think there are too many puns in the VOs on the 20s?”
“What? No,” Richie says, distracted. He’s got the script docked carefully in one corner of his laptop screen in case Jonny comes by and wants to see something to justify their salaries other than the two-hour televised gradual meltdown that they co-chair every night, but he’s mostly concerned about a poll happening on the Continental Sports website.
“Who’s hotter?” he wonders aloud, tone tinged with confusion. Carts sits up a little straighter. “Mike Richards or Jeff Carter.”
“Are you asking my personal opinion?” Carts asks. “Because it’s going to be a little disappointing for you.”
“Yeah, I don’t think it is,” Mike jokes, but he knows that he hasn’t pulled his punch enough because Carts looks away sharply; Mike’s just brushed against the main exhibit at the Things They Don’t Talk About Museum. Maybe he’s not even supposed to know that they’re not talking about it.
The problem with knowing someone for ten years is that the things they don’t talk about could fill a book.
“Well, you’re winning,” Mike says, looking back to his laptop and watching Jeff relax out of the corner of his eye, “Which I don’t even want to tell you because I know you’ll find a way to bring it up on the air.”
“I don’t have to,” Jeff smiles. “The Tri-State area has spoken. They already know who’s the hottest.” He spreads his arms on the couch, motioning to himself as if to say ‘drink it all in’, but Mike would probably be more impressed if he hadn’t been with Jeff for almost every major meltdown of his life.
“If they’d seen you facedown at that bar on Dove Street, they’d be singing a different tune,” he reminds, and Jeff blushes.
“I’d been drinking for thirteen hours already,” he defends. “We had. To celebrate our expansion into twenty markets.” He frowns. “I don’t think we made it to twenty hours. Did we make it?”
“Hour eighteen you tried to go home with that girl but then you threw up on her shoes.”
“I was young and lacked stamina,” Jeff dismisses, like he’s not even aware that he’s just lobbing them over the plate. “These days I could handle it.”
“These days I wouldn’t let you pass out in my shower and stay there for two days,” Mike says. And--
“Maybe there’s a way to rig this,” he mutters, glaring even harder at the screen.
*
All in all, Pat’s glad he got to be there the first time Sid met Geno.
The show goes alright; they only have to cut to commercial out of panic once and Carts and Richie seem remarkably sober. The real entertainment comes when the producers of the 12am show roll in.
‘World Sports Update’ is anchored by Alex Ovechkin, the loudest Russian that Pat's ever known, and PK Subban, who seems to thrive on the absolute insanity of both live television and working with Alex. PK's roommate is this plush-looking kid named Chucky ("From Galchenyuk," he explained with the kind of smile that suggested he'd explained it too many times before, "Because I'm also Alex.") who speaks both Russian and English natively and therefore has the most important job of picking Alex's cleverly disguised Russian profanities out of the script.
"Damn," Alex is saying when Pat walks into the writers room. He's standing next to Chucky and they're both leaning over a copy of the script. Several words are highlighted neon pink. "I didn't think you'd know what that one was."
"How's it going?" Pat asks. Alex shrugs, running a hand over his close-shorn hair.
"Another day, another dollar."
Pat can appreciate that. He doesn't make any comment about the WSU crew having their own offices downstairs because he actually likes Ovechkin’s visits, especially because Alex has absolutely no care for Jonny's obvious displeasure at his presence.
Sid meets him a few minutes later to go over the lead-ins and that's when Geno comes striding through the bullpen.
Pat's known Geno for a few years and has seen him turn the head of more than one intern; Geno likes to wear heavy jewelry and tight Oxford shirts with his cuffs rolled up and he smells like vetiver and ozone. Pat might have tried something himself if he weren’t in such a committed relationship with his right hand.
“My loyal and fearless producer!” Alex celebrates when Geno pushes open the frosted glass door of the conference room.
“You know that thing you say about Beckham?” he asks instead of dignifying Alex with a response. There’s a copy of the WSU script crumpled in Geno’s hand, too, but it has far more highlighting.
“Just discussing it,” Alex smiles, motioning between Chucky and himself.
“Good,” Geno says. “Take it out.”
“You’re being incendiary,” Chucky confirms, nodding when Alex looks to him for backup. Alex’s mouth pulls tight like he’s been betrayed.
“I don’t even know the meaning of the word,” he protests, hand on his heart.
"That’s true for a lot of words," Chucky reminds.
"I don’t cause trouble," Alex says, looking wounded.
"Federer took a swing at you at the US Open,” Geno reminds. “Fernando Torres tried to run you down with his car. You are a shit-stirrer and unless you want to be doing live cricket at four a.m. for the rest of your career, you take it out."
He shakes the script in his hand and slips out the door while Alex is still frowning.
"I have never been more attracted to you," Pat calls out.
"Out!" Geno shouts back as he walks towards the elevators.
Pat turns back to Sid, just to share a look of how great is that guy, right?, but Sid’s still watching Geno’s retreat. His eyes are wide and his lips are a little parted and-- oh.
“Don’t let him Lewinsky you,” Pat warns, gripping Sidney’s bicep.
Sid, for his part, looks extremely confused.
*
“What’s the story out of UCLA?” Jonny asks Patrick when he manages to corner him before the nine o’clock rundown. Pat’s been avoiding him all day, which probably means that his shot sheet is woefully unfinished. Jonny starts walking them back to the control room.
“The story is shooting percentage,” Patrick smiles, all teeth. “Shooting percentage and offensive blast.”
“What’s the score?” Jonny rolls his eyes.
“Wow, devil’s in the details,” Patrick sighs, sinking into his chair at his console. “Ask Sid.”
“Sid does baseball and maybe soccer,” Jonny responds, shuffling his papers and looking for his headset.
“Since when do you want to cover soccer?” Patrick scoffs, and nods at Danny when he drops a copy of the revisions into Pat’s hands. “Carts hates it.”
“Since I’ve got someone besides me to watch it and because Carts hates it,” Jonny says. He plucks the phone at his station out of the cradle and begins to dial. “I’m giving all the MLS pieces to him from now until Manhattan’s inevitable slide into the sea.”
“I hope that happens before shot sheets are due,” Patrick mutters, and Jonny knew it. He’s about to give him the appropriate amount of shit when his intrepid rookie reporter picks up.
“Have you--” he begins, but Ted comes at him with a lot of noise. “No listen-- listen, Teddy, it’s a standing two. Ask them about their running game, ask them about injuries.” He waves off both Danny, who has come by with the coffee carafe, and Richie, who has come by with a rude gesture on his way to the anchor desk.
“Done!” Patrick announces, throwing down his pen. From the look of his scribbles, east coast football is getting shortchanged tonight but he seems smug about it.
Jonny looks at the clock. 8:57. Patrick is such an eleventh-hour fucker.
*
Sid meets Richie’s girlfriend when she comes up from marketing, which is on the twelfth floor and, according to Jeff, some distant hellscape.
“She emerges once every full moon to feed off of the life-force of the closest man,” Jeff confides, making grabby, clawing motions with both hands.
Sid doesn’t think she looks like a monster at all, but maybe he’s just led a sheltered life. Rebecca is college-basketball tall and blonde, basically a grey power-suit’s worth of corded muscle on Jimmy Choo’s.
“This is Rebecca,” Richie introduces, “She centered the Connecticut team that beat Tennessee, she makes sure we earn enough money to stay in production, and she has impeccable taste in men.”
“Hi,” Sid smiles. Rebecca narrows her eyes.
“You ever been on the air?” She tilts her head, gaze raking over him.
“No?”
“Think about it.” Then to Richie she says, “You’re taking me to lunch.”
“Oh, has your hunger for innocent souls been satisfied for now? We’re moving on to lunch?” Jeff asks when Mike steps back to the office to get his jacket.
“You know what?” Rebecca asks, pushing one white-tipped nail into Jeff’s chest. “I was just thinking, ‘it’s been so long since Jeff said something charming to me’, and there you are.”
“I have a way with people,” Jeff agrees. Rebecca curls her lip a bit and drags her finger down the crisp line of Jeff’s button-up until she can hook it lightly into his belt near the buckle. She gives a brief tug but lets go when Richie comes back and nods towards the elevators.
Sid watches them go and when he turns back to Jeff, Carts is looking at him with the same intensity from the poker game. There’s a long moment when they just stare at each other amidst the hustle of the bullpen before a rundown.
“Don’t you have baseball to be watching?” Jeff finally says, posture relaxing.
“Don’t you have a show to be writing?” Sid asks.
“It’s a process,” Jeff retorts. “A very involved process.”
“As in, it involves a lot of staring at Richie and his girlfriend?”
Jeff startles, but still comes back, “Don’t question my methods.”
*
The suits ride into town on a Thursday.
Every month or two the junior executives from Continental Sports Corporation hustle over from midtown to hassle Isaac Jaffey, the station manager, and grill Jon about their falling numbers. The only thing consistent about the ratings is their low place in them.
They especially enjoy not calling ahead, so Jonny has no time to prepare.
“Mister Toews, a word,” one of them says, popping his head into the control room. Jon grimaces but gets up to follow; Patrick gives him something trying to be an enthusiastic thumbs up with a smile, but he just ends up looking like he ate some bad seafood.
“When they say ‘a word’ they actually mean several words, shouted,” Pat clarifies for Sid after Jonny’s gone.
“They do this a lot?”
“Enough,” Pat shrugs. “They like to make sure we know who’s boss. Jonny’s pretty good about keeping that shit from rolling down on us, though. He does what he’s gotta to keep us from getting cancelled.”
*
“Sid, check Pat’s shot sheet. He got something wrong in the 20s,” Jonny says when they’re a few minutes from air. Jeff and Richie are at the anchor desk having their earpieces adjusted and everyone else is in the control room. Pat’s been making faces at Jonny all day, which is why when Sid leans over and says, “You got something wrong?”
Pat comes back with, “Yes, and after the show I’m going to walk into the sea.”
“Our insurance does not cover that,” Briere reminds from his seat a row up.
“Two minutes in, three minutes live,” Sharp calls. Briere scribbles a note and passes it to him.
“Are my diplomacy skills needed?” Jeff asks.
Pat leans forward and presses the call button on his headset. “Your diplomacy skills are not needed and are also non-existent.”
Jeff makes a face, holding it until Richie laughs.
“You don’t have any updates for west coast hockey,” Sid reports, handing back Pat’s sheet. Jonny clucks his tongue and Pat sighs.
“Let Alex and PK have them,” he says, shrugging. Jonny’s still glaring.
“Show me the chyron on four,” Jonny says, and Sharp replies “Four’s up!”
“Is this gonna be one of those times when you say ‘It’s fine, I don’t want to talk about it’?” Jon asks, covering the microphone of his headset.
“I think this is gonna be one of those times when I say that I don’t want to talk about it and then we talk about it anyway,” Pat mutters.
“Fine, just repress, that’s worked really well for you in the past,” Jonny says, and then they’re rolling VTR.
*
Rebecca joins them in the studio at the 30s, standing behind the cameras and giving little waves at Richie when the close-up is on Jeff. They’re probably going to dinner afterwards, Pat thinks, because there’s no other reason for her to be here this late.
“Fix his face, jesus,” Jonny cringes, swatting Pat’s arm. “You absolutely have to fix Cartsy’s face.”
Pat looks up at the monitors just in time to see Jeff looking a little seasick.
“If you don’t stop looking sad I’m going to punch you in the throat,” he says when he comes out to deliver updates during the break.
“That’s supposed to make me happy?” Jeff asks, eyebrows raised. Maria does their makeup and she’s fluttering around now, geling pieces of his hair back into place.
“It’ll make me happy,” Pat smiles before retreating to the control room. “Your mopery is translating to the camera.”
“I think this counts as a hostile work environment,” Jeff announces.
“Hostilities have not even begun,” Jonny says into their earpieces. “Back in ninety.”
“Rebecca wants to double-date,” Richie mentions as Maria moves over to him.
“Rebecca wants the world to believe she’s a natural blonde but it’s not going to happen,” Jeff says, tugging his tie into place.
“Come on, Cartsy, she’s got a friend.”
The greenish tinge to Jeff is back. “What was my number one rule?”
“No oysters in months that don’t end in ‘R’?” Richie guesses.
“My rule about dating,” Jeff clarifies, rolling his eyes.
“No one from marketing?”
“No one from marketing.”
“What if she was from PR? That’s only, like, half-marketing at the worst,” Mike shrugs, accepting a last-minute box-score update from Briere.
“It’s a half too much. No double-dates,” Jeff reiterates, giving up on his tie and motioning over Linda from wardrobe.
“Ten seconds to air,” Jonny calls over the PA.
*
Kyle Whittaker is the first choice running back at Case Western and he goes down for assault after his girlfriend and her brother call the cops in the early hours of Saturday morning.
“He choked her and punched him,” Briere reports to an unusually quiet writers room.
“This isn’t the first time he’s been in trouble,” Jon says. “In his freshman year he was put on probation while the university led an investigation into a party he went to with a lot of underage drinking and disorderly conduct.”
“Nothing was proven,” Pat reminds. “They dropped the charges.”
“They were headed to the Rose Bowl,” Gagner counters. “Of course they dropped the charges.”
“I’m sending Patrick to Ohio for Whittaker’s press conference,” Jon interjects. “Danny will fill in.”
Jon calls the meeting to a close after the check the voiceovers in the 40s and everyone shuffles out. Danny waits to catch Jon’s arm.
“Are you going to string this kid up?” he asks, gripping tighter.
Jonny smiles a little crookedly.
“If he did it, everyone should know. It just happens to be my job to tell them.”
“I think your history with Whittaker is clouding your judgement on this,” Danny cautions. Kyle is no friend of Sports Night and has never made a secret of it. He thinks their questions are leading and their reporters are annoying.
Jon pulls out of his grasp but claps him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’re the good guys. You trust me?”
Danny’s eyes soften. “Of course I trust you, Jon. But I’m worried--”
“We’re the good guys,” Jon says firmly, and steps out to the bullpen.
*
The call comes to Jonny’s station but Sid is actually the one who answers it.
He’s in the control room, running spots with Jon and Jeff because they’re still a minute flat in the 30s, and he just reaches over when the phone begins to trill.
“Yeah, he’s-- no, he works here.” Jonny raises an eyebrow but Sid looks away, has to focus on the color-test pattern on the monitors to make sure he’s concentrating, hearing this correctly. “Yeah, absolutely. I’ll tell our producer. Yeah, thanks.”
And the thing that strikes him is that Jonny does not look half as surprised as he should when Sid tells him “Patrick's in the hospital because Whittaker took a swing at him.”
Jon makes an abortive shrugging motion, but his face goes flat.
“How bad?”
“He’s gonna be okay,” Sid says. “Apparently he told one of the ER nurses to contact us.”
“Should-- should we go down there?” Jeff asks, already out of his seat.
“I’ll send Sharpy,” Jon says, already turning back to the script. “But we have to finish this before the rundown or there isn’t any show. C’mon.”
“Jesus,” Jeff breathes, but he follows Jonny’s cue and picks up his pen.
*
“What happened?” Jonny asks when he slides back into his seat in the control room. He had spent most of the show time driving Sharp back to his apartment to pack a bag and then hustling him to JFK for his flight to Cleveland. The show is just winding down.
“We blew the cue at twenty-seven,” Danny replies, shuffling his papers over to make room for Jon.
“Well, that’s not so bad,” Jon says. “Anything else?”
“We had the wrong VO at thirty-four, the wrong chyron at forty, and we would have had dead air at forty-five but Richie did twenty seconds of something that I think was the St. Crispin’s Day speech.”
It’s hard to believe they’re in third place.
*
Pat comes back to New York a few days later with bruising along his jaw and Sharpy in tow.
“I’ve been carrying his shit all week out of dedication and concern,” Sharp laments, dropping Patrick’s jacket and carry-on at his desk. “And he doesn’t even have the decency to act hurt.”
It’s true; Sid can see across the bullpen to where Pat has one of the graphics interns in a headlock.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Jonny defends. “They only took him to the hospital for the police report and the insurance.”
“It wasn’t that bad if you got to be here and not catering to his whims,” Sharpy mutters.
Sid is distracted from the spectacle of Pat’s return by Geno, stepping off the elevator and carrying a stack of manila folders.
“Hey, G,” he smiles, and Geno beams back.
“Sid,” he says, curling a big hand around Sid’s elbow, “I need help fact-checking.” He flaps the folders lightly.
Sid’s pretty sure that no one could need the amount of fact-checking Geno requests and still manage to operate the door handle to make it out of the house in the morning, but he doesn’t object. Geno’s wearing a navy button-down and his hair’s still damp and curling from a shower, and if he wants to spend two hours learning over Sid’s shoulder in one of the conference rooms, well, Sid’s not going to be the first one to speak up.
He’ll only have to say something if Ovechkin comes in, because Alex has this little gleam to his eye whenever he finds Sid and Geno together and Sid needs to put the brakes on whatever that is before it can grow.
*
Richie and Rebecca break up on Tuesday. No one is less surprised than Mike himself, no one is hiding their glee worse than Jeff.
“If my grave injury was the catalyst for you realizing your undying love for me,” Pat grins, “I have to tell you that I’m already spoken for.”
Mike rolls his eyes dramatically. “No, you made me realize that life’s too short to spend it with people I don’t like.”
Patrick mimes being shot in the heart; the others assembled in the writers room kick up a laugh and at this rate they’re going to be in the rundown for the next year.
“A lesson we could all learn,” Jonny huffs, pointedly bringing his attention back to the script. “What’s the word out of Indian Wells?”
“Not raining,” Cogliano pipes up, and Jon nods.
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” he says and dismisses the meeting. Everyone meanders out and Pat heads to the stairwell, determined to pop down to the sixth floor. He’s spent the last three years here carefully cataloguing all of the vending machines and the ones on six have the best stock and the loosest slots. He’s halfway down the first staircase when he hears the firedoor slam again and Sid catches up to him.
“What’s up, my greatest hire?” Pat asks.
“I came to tell you that it looks like Cleveland is going to go to a four-man rotation for the stretch drive,” Sid begins as they shuffle down the stairs, “the Dodgers have Giguere locked in a hotel room in San Diego so that trade’s definitely going ahead, and the suits are in Isaac’s office. Are you really spoken for?”
“Not really,” Pat smiles as he pushes open the door to six. “I was just trying to lighten the mood.”
“Oh,” Sid says, shuffling the papers in his hand. “For some reason I thought it was Tazer.”
Patrick almost walks into one of the paralegals wandering around this department because he stops so short, and he feels a laugh come rippling up.
“Jonny?” he cackles, and Sid’s blushing a little, looking down. “No way. For one, that’s definitely a relationship that would end up with us in the police blotter. Two,” he lowers his voice and leans in, “Tazer’s still a little hung-up on Richie from college. But you didn’t hear it from me.” He pulls back quickly and crosses himself.
“Yeah?” Sid seems surprised.
“Closure is not in the curriculum at North Dakota,” Pat nods. “Did you really not know?”
“I’m not the details guy,” Sid waves his hand in dismissal.
“You kind of are,” Pat says, which is a point Sid concedes with a shrug. They round the corner to the break area and Pat makes crazy eyes at the only junior associate sitting near the vending machines until they have the place to themselves.
“Jonny and Richie are the Ross and Rachel of this office,” Pat explains. “The will-they-won’t-they is killing me with suspense.”
“Ugh, I thought the big story was Jeff and Richie.” Sid stuffs his hands in his pockets. Pat rears back suddenly from where he had pressed his face against the glass of the vending machine.
“Don’t talk about it,” he says. “Especially not in front of them. I’m not cleaning that up.”
Sid looks surprised, which Pat likes; it probably means that the thought of telling everyone hadn’t even occurred to him. “I wasn’t going to put it in their Christmas cards or whatever,” he protests.
Pat forces himself to relax and he zeroes in on a Pop-Tart on the top row that’s dangling precariously. “Good. Now give me a dollar and keep a lookout. Or try to, I know you’re not so observant.”
“I get half-credit for Jeff and Richie,” Sid mutters. Pat smiles.
*
Jeff, however, seems pretty convinced that Sidney knows something that he absolutely pretends he doesn’t and manages to corner him during Alex’s birthday party.
They all go out on a Saturday night when both Sports Night and World Sports Update are preempted by an exclusive broadcast of World Cup qualifying, and they start at a restaurant in Brooklyn that does Basque food. Unfortunately, it also has long formica tables and a variety of used classroom chairs.
“This place is the definition of trying too hard,” Pat leans over and whispers when he drops into a chair next to Sid, who’s been sitting at the far end of one of the folding banquet tables. His shoulders slump with relief when he takes Pat’s remark as permission to stop pretending that he’s enjoying himself.
“The food’s good but I’m being forced to sit with strangers and they’ve painted the chandeliers black. Who even does that?”
Apparently Ovechkin has the same thought about fifteen minutes later because Geno and PK pick up the tab and usher everyone into a line of waiting cabs. At least they’ve put more planning into this than most of Sid’s friends do; he usually ends a night out with no money and no idea where he is.
The pile out on Henry Street in front of an Italian place that’s all glass and marble and subway lights. They take up most of the bar area, which is thankfully separated from the restaurant by a chest-high wall, and Sid manages to snag a spot at the end of the bar. He’s a safe distance away from where Alex and PK are sloshing their drinks around, pretending to anchor a segment about the party, but close enough to keep an eye on Geno and pick the best moment to casually strike up conversation.
He can hear Geno, more than a few drinks deep, slipping between Russian and English mid-sentence and figures now’s a good time, but suddenly Jeff slides onto the next barstool and pushes a neat scotch in front of him.
“Aberlour?” Jeff asks, and Sid accepts, raising the glass to Carter. Jeff nods back.
“So, having fun?” he says, and takes a huge swallow of his own tumbler. There are three small pieces of ice left and he swirls them around.
“I guess,” Sid says, taking a sip and holding it in the well of his tongue as he breathes out. They sit quietly for a minute.
“So, when we were playing cards,” Jeff begins, “you said that you were so good because you watch everything.”
Sid nods. “I used to play hockey. I’m not the biggest guy so I had to be able to see everything to anticipate hits and get around big kids.”
“You still watching?” Jeff asks, but he’s looking away and down the bar. Sid doesn’t have to follow his gaze to know what he’s looking at.
He considers his options, like how long he can stay silent here and just how wide Jeff’s eyes always are around Richie, and knows what is answer has to be.
“Nah, man. Only when I’m in a game.”
Jeff doesn’t relax. He nods and nudges Sid’s shoulder, but he never loses the jitter in his leg and he stays with Sid the rest of the night, even when Richie brings over a girl for each of them.
*
“No, listen, I want a two-four-six hard count, okay?” Jonny emphasizes his point by clapping out the rhythm. Joan, their sound engineer, nods.
It’s not, strictly speaking, his job to be working on the promos, but he didn’t get to be executive producer of a third-rate sports show on a fourth-rate network at twenty-five by just sitting back.
“Jonathan, I have some bad news,” Pat calls when he passes him on the way to the bullpen.
“If one of Sharpy’s graphics interns is suing you, I can’t help,” Jon says, just to get that out in the open. Patrick laughs as he falls into step with him.
“No, although that feels like a matter of time, right?”
Jon nods.
“I have updates for you on the situation out of Bowling Green, the Ravens’ decision not to resign Brubaker, and I am twenty to thirty percent closer to solving the mystery of who’s taking your lunch from the breakroom.”
“I’m not convinced that it’s not you, by the way,” Jon reminds, because he doesn’t like Pat to get complacent in his pranks, even if it’s not him, and it’s definitely him.
“If it were me I would just tell you because then I could check off ‘solve the lunch crisis’ on my little to-do list,” Pat says.
“So what’s the bad news?”
“I am still seventy to eighty percent away from solving it,” Pat smiles. “Is it raining in Glocca Morra?”
“No,” Jonny huffs, “Because it’s raining in Indian Wells. Didn’t you read the morning briefing?”
“No.”
“Then who does?” he wonders, handing off a stack of west coast updates to Briere as they pass by his desk.
“No one,” Pat says.
“Well why do I write them?”
“We’ve been working around the clock to figure it out,” Patrick assures him with a nod.
“Let me know what you find.”
Pat nods again and heads for Jeff and Richie’s office.
*
“Do you know what today is?” Jeff asks when they sit down at the desk for dress rehearsal.
“The twenty-fifth of October?” Richie guesses. He’s not really paying attention; his sport coat came back from wardrobe with stains and his earpiece keeps falling out and Linda just cinched his tie way too tight.
“Yes, but also no,” Jeff riddles. “Where were we five years ago today?”
“Not anchoring Sports Night,” Richie says. He’s sure of that, at least.
“Minnesota,” Jeff answers. “To be more specific, the lobby of the St. Paul Radisson.”
“Oh.”
“We had a lot to drink,” Jeff intones. He looks serious.
“Did we do anything untoward?” Richie feels obligated to ask. Five years ago they were doing a local show out of Philly and it felt like the first time they actually had concrete proof of how much more girls liked you if you were on television. The whole gig was kind of a blur.
“Untoward?” Jeff repeats. “Like get married?”
“Yeah.”
“We did not get married,” Jeff assures.
“Then what?” Richie tries to surreptitiously loosen his tie but can’t escape Linda’s watchful gaze.
“We had a lot to drink and you recited the entire St. Crispin’s Day speech in the lobby,” Jeff says.
“From Henry V?” Richie clarifies. He had been in a production in high school. Jeff nods. “Was it untoward?”
“It was embarrassing,” Jeff answers, and then Jonny’s calling the mark.
*
“But you really don’t know?” Jeff presses as they walk back to their office, after Jon had released them with strict orders not to be drunk before the ten o’clock rundown.
“I really don’t,” Richie sighs. He flops down onto his desk chair and Jeff takes his spot on the couch.
“Today is the anniversary of us signing on to CSC,” he says, looking out the window. “That’s why we had so much to drink.”
“Yeah? I don’t really remember us needing much of a reason.” But to be fair, he doesn’t remember much.
There’s a long moment of silence, but it’s not so uncomfortable that Mike feels compelled to break it.
“I wasn’t-- I wasn’t exactly sure why you signed with CSC,” Jeff mumbles eventually, and Richie wonders if maybe they should be drinking for this. “I know Bristol was looking at you.”
“Not seriously,” Mike dismisses.
“Yes they were,” Jeff insists, “And I just-- sometimes I worry that... you’re gonna look at me someday and be reminded that you didn’t make it to the big leagues or whatever.”
Mike shakes his head and pulls open his laptop screen to have something to do besides stare at the column of Carts’s throat as he cranes his neck to look out the window. “Not gonna happen.”
“Yeah, but--”
“No,” Richie interrupts. “I mean, they offered me the job.”
Jeff jerks around to stare at him. “What?”
“When Smithson left,” Mike shrugs. “They offered me a spot, and I turned them down.”
“Why?” Jeff sits up and even looks a little angry.
“Because the deal was only for one of us,” Richie says. “We’ve been doing this together for ten years, and if I wasn’t going to drop you after that time you threw up on me and my couch...”
He shrugs again and looks down at his laptop. “We’ll get to Bristol eventually, and if we don’t, whatever.”
Jeff’s maybe as intent as Mike’s ever seen him, when he glances back up, and they hold eye contact for a suffocating moment before--
“The whole speech, really?”
“Even Westmoreland’s part,” Jeff nods.
*
“Jack Sweetmar is gay,” Jon announces at the next script meeting, and he very suddenly has everyone's attention.
“The pro-golfer?” Patrick asks, eyebrows drawing together. “Isn’t he like, twelve? Why are you telling us this?”
“He’s twenty-two and I’m telling you this because he made a stupid mistake with someone he shouldn’t have trusted,” Jon corrects. “Now some asshole is shopping around the pictures.”
“Did we get a call?” Briere asks. Jonny’s face darkens.
“We did, but from Sweetmar. He wants us to sit on the story.”
“He could take control of the narrative if he goes on the offensive,” Patrick remarks, but Jonny shakes his head.
“He isn’t ready for this and we’re not going to be the ones to force his hand. Executive decision.” He redirects attention to the spot on the lack of depth in the Angels’ rotation, and the meeting concludes quietly. (Quietly except for Sid’s impassioned defense of the Angels’ rotation. “It’s a rebuilding year,” he huffs.)
*
The suits are in Isaac’s office the next morning.
“We saw the show,” Joey says. “Not impressed.”
Jon is not impressed by a grown man who still refers to himself as ‘Joey’, but he doesn’t think that would be a particularly welcome critique.
“What’s the problem?” he asks instead. Isaac is sitting behind the desk, fingers steepled and face stormy, so Jon figures that the junior dream team has already spoken to him.
“I heard that you had the Sweetmar story yesterday, with the option to buy,” Danielle says, faux-casually. She’s wearing stilettos and an all-black outfit, and looks like a giant bird of prey perched on Isaac’s leather sofa.
“We did, and we passed,” Jon replies, matter-of-fact.
“Well now some local affiliate from bumfuck nowhere has the exclusive, and we’re getting shafted,” Joey responds. He’s puffing his chest out.
“He asked us not to run it,” Jon defends. Danielle looks ready to pounce.
“But it’s news, isn’t it?” she asks. “And this is, fundamentally, a news-gathering organization?”
“It’s sensationalist,” Jon snaps. “I’m not going to publicly out a kid just for ratings!”
“It seems like you don’t do anything for ratings!” Joey shouts back, and now he and Danielle are out of their seats and advancing. Jon doesn’t know what kind of Machiavellian bullshit goes on at corporate headquarters, but it must really be heavy if these two are the product of it.
“I authorized Jonathan to pass on the story,” Isaac finally says.
They both whip their heads around.
“Interesting,” Joey muses. “Maybe there are two people at Sports Night who don’t quite understand how television works.”
He and Danielle sweep out of the room with a “You’ll be seeing us soon” tossed over their shoulders.
*
Danny finds Jon sitting in the almost-dark of his office, staring out at the bank of windows behind his desk. The lights are off but the glow of the city seeps in, even this high up.
“I saw that the execs were here,” Danny says, shutting the door behind him. He flicks on the tiny desk lamp and Jon doesn’t object. At the edge of the pool of light he can see the crumpled pack of cigarettes sitting on the corner of the desk.
“That bad?” he asks. Jon shrugs, still looking out the window.
“I wasn’t sure if it would feel worse to want one or to have one,” Jonny finally admits. “I took them out and put them back about five times.”
“I miss them so much,” Danny commiserates. He gave them up when his youngest was born, except that a few years later his wife left him and the boys for good, and he found the moment that really deserved a cigarette. “I have a pack in my freezer. It’d be great just to watch you smoke one.”
Jon forces out something close to a laugh, and then they fall into silence again.
It lasts just long enough for Danny to really consider reaching over and tapping one out of the pack, and then Jon speaks again.
“Maybe they’re right. It’s a news story, we’re a news organization. We need the ratings.”
“We don’t need ratings that badly,” Danny bristles. The suits are never correct, but they’re especially wrong about this. Jon always doubts himself, though, when the dust has settled.
“But we do,” Jon says, heavy and a little ominous.
“There are limits,” Danny responds. “There are some lines you can’t cross.”
“Those lines are keeping this show from moving up in the standings.”
“Psh, take away our ethics and our unnatural good looks and we’re just ESPN,” Danny smiles.
Jon seems to suck in a breath, holding it for a second, before--
“I sent Pat on purpose.”
“What?” Danny drags his gaze off of the seascape prints that line the walls of Jon’s office.
“To Ohio,” Jon explains. “I could have sent you or Gagner. But I knew that Whittaker had a problem with Pat and I thought I could provoke a more... realistic response to the questions.”
“Do you think Pat knows?”
“I don’t know,” Jon admits. He still won’t look at Danny. “I just-- I saw Whittaker getting away with it, you know? They were going to sweep it under the rug. And we could have the exclusive, maybe buy just a minute of goddamn peace from upstairs.”
“So you forced his hand?”
“In a way,” Jon shrugs. “Their lawyers can sit on that girlfriend story all they want, but this one is ours.”
“Is Pat willing to be in the reports?” Danny feels he should ask.
“Yeah,” Jon waves his hand. “He’s fine with it. We’re going to avoid mentioning him by name unless we absolutely have to.” He scrubs his palms over his face.
“Remember what you told me in the rundown?” Danny says. “Is it still true?”
Jon pauses, sitting very still. Finally his shoulders sag a bit. “Yes.”
“Are we the good guys?”
“Yes,” Jonny says, with more conviction. “He’s a criminal and we proved it.”
“His girlfriend had strangulation marks on her neck and her brother needed twenty-six stitches, and you sent Pat. Are we the good guys?”
“We proved it,” Jon repeats.
“Do you think Pat knows about it?” Danny asks again.
He finally swings around in his chair to look at Danny. “Yes,” he answers, and his voice sounds hollow. “Don’t-- don’t tell Richie, okay?”
They return to the silence for a while, until it’s too much. Danny makes his excuses and leaves.
*
Sid’s pretty sure Geno is interested, that’s not the problem. Geno brings him coffee and walks to the park with him on their union breaks, he’s always giving light touches to Sid’s arm when they do revisions together, and his eyes crinkle when he looks at Sid.
The problem with trying to date Geno, Sid soon realizes, is that Alex seems to be trying just as hard on his behalf.
Sometimes Sid stays after Sports Night to watch WSU from the studio; if that means that he runs into Geno a lot more, well, whatever. But Alex is making sure that Geno notices just how much Sid’s around.
“Sidney is here to cheer us on!” Ovechkin shouts when he notices Sid hesitating outside the control room a few minutes before WSU goes to air.
“I’m here in a professional capacity,” Sid frowns. “I do all the stats-checking for your show.”
Alex appears unconvinced, if the way he swats Geno on the shoulder to direct his attention is any indication. Geno gives a smile and a small wave before turning back to where he’s reviewing something in the script with PK.
A few nights later, Alex motions him over to the anchor desk during a commercial break.
“You watch us a lot,” he says, swiveling around in his chair.
“You’re an important part of CSC,” Sid shrugs, aware that everything they say can be heard in the control room.
“But you must be tired at work the next day,” Alex presses, putting on what Sid can clearly see is fake concern.
“It’s alright,” Sid insists, just as Geno calls “Thirty seconds back!”
“That’s a nice shirt,” PK interjects, leaning across Alex to get a better look at Sid. “It fits you really well. How does it read on the monitors, Geno?”
“Looks good,” Geno says over the loudspeakers, and PK gives Sid an exaggerated wink.
But for all that Alex and PK have begun what Sid considers to be a war of attrition against his professional and personal dignity, it’s maybe sort of working. For as much as Sid bumps into Geno, Geno bumps into him. He puts his hand on the small of Sid’s back and sometimes walks him down to the twelfth floor to deliver promos. Sid is especially bolstered by the way Geno’s eyes hardened that time Flower snuck up on one of their revisions meetings and wrapped his arms around Sid’s waist, hooking his chin over Sid’s shoulder. Sid had startled and then laughed it off, Flower already giggling, but Geno looked less than amused.
So Sid’s either going to slap Alex or buy him a muffin basket.
And so maybe he should be kind of expecting it when Geno corners him after the eight o’clock rundown and asks for some script work. He puts his palm low on Sid’s back, fingers brushing the waist of his jeans, and guides him to the tapes archive.
“I need footage of Orlando Rojas,” he says, but he’s still hovering near the door, which he’s pulled shut behind them.
Sidney turns to the shelves of tape, mostly DVD but some VHS, and asks, “As a starter or as long relief?”
Geno doesn’t reply, and even though he can feel where this is going, it’s still a bit of a surprise when Sid turns back around and Geno’s suddenly much closer. His gaze keeps flicking between Sid’s eyes and Sid’s mouth.
“No tape?” Sid guesses.
“No tape,” Geno says, but he doesn’t make a move. Sid doesn’t take, it’s rude, but he can think of this as a continuation of a long plan to earn what he wants, and that allows him to lean up and press his lips lightly against the corner of Geno’s mouth.
They stand there for a moment, after Sid drops back down to flat feet, just holding too close in the calm before the storm. Geno’s eyes are hooded and he wraps both arms around Sid’s waist, fingers splayed on Sid’s hips, and then he presses back in.
Sid can feel Geno warm and heavy at his front and the shelving cutting into his back. Geno skims one hand further down to cup the back of his thigh, like he’s going to pull Sid’s leg up around his waist, like he’s just feeling the weight of it, and Sid slides his fingers into Geno’s hair to show appreciation for that plan. Geno rolls his tongue against his and Sid tightens his grip just as the door bangs open.
“Cogs needs to remix the master on Ro-- oh my god!” Sharp shouts, covering his eyes with his hand and backing out just as quickly. “I’m so sorry! Carry on!”
It’s not the most strategic retreat Sid’s ever seen. He buries his face in Geno’s shoulder, and Geno gives his ass a little squeeze and lets go, laughing for a moment and stepping back.
“I have to go, or Alex will be mad he heard it from Sharpy and not me,” he says, but then he hooks a finger into Sid’s gold chain and tugs him in for a feathery, teasing kiss that makes heat drop like a stone through Sid’s belly.
“You’re really going?” he asks, gasping.
“Orlando Rojas is pitching a no-hitter,” Geno shrugs.
*
Patrick gets the word an hour before showtime.
He goes around and around with after he finds out, but eventually calls Jonny and the writers together with the memo “Andy York plays in the AHL and might be trying to kill someone.”
“Is this just a personal goal he’s set, or does he have someone specific in mind?” Jonny asks when they’ve assembled in the conference room for an emergency meeting.
“Uh, for this at least, it’s somebody specific,” Patrick clarifies. “They’re in Oklahoma tonight and he went hard to the net with Matt Galvin, took him down, and nicked his throat with his skate blade. Galvin’s in the hospital, the game’s gone into overtime.”
There’s a sort of shocked silence in the room, no one quite sure what to do, but when Patrick looks at Jonny he sees the intense look usually reserved for CSC executives.
“How’d they call it?” Jon asks.
“Gross misconduct,” Pat replies. “He’s out of the game, probably suspended.”
“Probably?” Jon raises an eyebrow.
“It’s not even over yet,” Patrick explains. “The game’s still going on, and Galvin’s in surgery. We only have this story because my cousin’s there and she gave me the heads up.”
Jonny looks up to the corner of the room, down to his papers, and then back to Pat. “Did it look deliberate?” he asks after a beat.
Pat shrugs. “Hard to say. They won’t replay it in the arena and the game wasn’t being broadcast on TV.”
“I’m sure we’ll have the footage eventually,” Richie comments.
“This is only exclusive for so long,” Jonny says, shaking his head. “There’s no time to wait. We need to break a story.” It’s the truth; the suits were by again today.
“How are you gonna run it?” Jeff wrinkles his brow.
“What’s his history?” Jonny asks the room.
“Not great,” Patrick admits. “He’s always been a little too aggressive. He has a reputation.”
“How are you gonna run this?” Jeff repeats, sounding harsher. “This could end his career. We’re the first ones with this story and how we run it sets the tone for everyone else.”
“I know,” Jonny says, pushing back from the table and standing up. “And I want a page of copy from each of you in fifteen. Sharp, I need graphics on this. Sid, I need everything you can find about York. Pat, get on the phone with your cousin, I want to know everything she knows.”
He claps his hands and everyone steps into action like they were on pause.
*
Andy York’s biggest problem, besides the indeterminate suspension coming down the pipes, is that no one knows a lot about him except for his reputation as a bully.
“A lot of guys are a little rough,” Mike points out, “Especially if they’re bruisers trying to break into the show.”
“But you could argue that he goes too far,” Flower says. “This is not the first time he has sent someone to the hospital.”
“But that was always for minor injuries,” Cogliano reminds. “Broken fingers and stuff.”
“There have been accidents like this before from clean players,” Brayden chimes in.
“We’re going to lead with this,” Jon says, running his hand through his hair. “It’s gotta be tight.”
*
They take nineteen minutes to cobble together two different versions of the script.
“In this one,” Pat holds up one sheet, “York goes down as a loose cannon who shouldn’t be allowed near Disney on Ice, let alone a hockey game. The injury is framed as a deliberate attempt on a division rival. In this one,” he holds up the other paper, “it was an unfortunate accident and everyone’s hoping for Galvin’s speedy recovery.”
“Any updates on him?” Jon asks. Patrick shakes his head.
“The staff isn’t talking. There are two or three local reporters waiting at the hospital. No one I know, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Let me know if anything changes.”
“This is going to end his career,” Richie says suddenly, reading the page he’s snatched from Pat’s hand.
“Not for certain,” Flower shrugs.
“Well it’s definitely not helping,” Jeff retorts.
“We go to air in twenty minutes,” Danny reminds. “You have to pick.”
“Do we have anything more?” Jon asks Patrick.
Patrick frowns. “There’s no tape yet. Players on his team think it’s an accident, their rivals do not. The fans didn’t get a good look.”
“The refs obviously thought something suspicious happened,” Gagner interjects.
“They couldn’t avoid giving a penalty,” Pat rationalizes. “They had to stop the game for four minutes to mop up enough blood to resume play. Galvin’s parents are flying in. They had to give something.”
“Does the club have any comment?”
“None so far,” Pat says. “I think they’re waiting for him to get out of surgery.”
“And York’s done this before?” Jon turns a speculative eye on Sidney.
“He has a history of dirty plays,” Sid admits.
“C’mon, you know that’s not enough,” Jeff hisses.
“Patrick, stay,” Jon raises his voice, dismissing them. “I’ll see everyone else in twenty for the broadcast.”
*
Patrick and Jonny walk into the control room with ninety seconds to air. Everyone else is already spooled up for the show and Mike and Jeff are in place. Jon takes his seat at his console and Patrick continues through to the anchor desk, carrying a page of copy in each hand.
Sid’s been monitoring the phones, especially Pat’s cellphone, but nothing new has come in.
“How are we gonna run this?” he asks, and Jon stares ahead at the monitors.
“Are we the good guys?”
Sid just shrugs.